is sufficient. When we earnestly desire to do right, God always provides us with work. We must all try to aid you. And Gerald is now our brother, papa; he must accompany us in our wanderings. The boys anticipate with great delight the pleasures of a sea-voyage, and I myself, though I regret to leave my poor people, enjoy the idea of looking on the wonders of the world."

"Then, Margaret," added Mr. Mayburn, "I must trust you and Jenny to watch that giddy boy, Gerald. Warn him of the dangers that surround him. I should never survive if he were to fall overboard. I promised O'Brien much; but, alas! I have done little."

Margaret engaged to use all needful watchfulness, though, she assured her father, Arthur would care for the young boys; and being now convinced that her father's resolution to leave England was earnest and unchangeable, the young girl, assisted by Jenny Wilson, the old nurse, set about the serious preparations for this important change; and when a mission to a remote part of India was proposed to Mr. Mayburn, he found the whole of his family as ready as he was himself to enter into this new and hazardous undertaking.

"I looked for nothing better, Miss Marget, my darling," said nurse Jenny; "and my poor mistress, lying on her death-bed, saw it all plainly. Says she to me, 'Nurse,' says she, 'your good master will never settle after I'm gone. He'll be for shifting from this place; but mind this, nurse, you'll stick to my childer.' And then and there I said I would never leave ye; 'specially you, Miss Marget; where you go, I must go, and I hope God will spare me to nurse childer of yours. Though where you are to meet with a suiting match I cannot see, if master will choose to go and live among black savages."

"Not so bad as that, nurse," said Margaret, smiling. "I trust that our lot may be cast on a more civilized spot, where we may find many of our own countrymen living among the benighted people we are sent to teach; and even they, though ignorant and degraded, are not absolutely savage, neither are they blacks, my dear nurse."

"Well, my child, you know best," answered Jenny. "But there's a sore task laid out for you, that will have all the work to do. Not but what master is a grand hand at preaching, and can talk wonderful, nows and thens, to poor folks; but he cannot get round them as you can. He never seems to be talking to them as it were face to face, but all like preaching to them out of his pulpit; and somehow he never gets nigh hand to them. But it's God will, and, please Him, we must all do our best; we shall be missed here; and oh, Miss Marget, what will come of poor Ruth Martin? and we promising to take the lass next month, and make a good servant of her. Here's Jack, too; just out of his time, a fair good workman, and a steady lad, and none but you and master to look up to, poor orphans."

"Do not be distressed, nurse," replied Margaret, "I have thought of all my scholars; I have prepared a list of those I wish papa especially to recommend to his successor; and perhaps Mrs. Newton will take Ruth on trial."

"She won't do it, Miss Marget," answered Jenny. "I tried her before, and she flounces, and flames, and says all sorts of ill words again the lass, as how she's flappy and ragged, and knows nothing; and when I asked her what she could expect from childer as was found crying over their poor father and mother lying dead under a hedge; she said outright, she should expect they would turn out vagabonds, like them they belonged to. Yes, she said that; after you had given the poor things schooling for six years."

It was not the least of Margaret Mayburn's pangs, on leaving Wendon, that she must be compelled to abandon the poor children of the parish, whom she had long taught and cared for; and she sighed over the incapacity of the rough orphan girl that she now set out with her faithful nurse to visit.

Ruth and Jack Martin had been found one cold morning of winter in a lane leading to the village of Wendon, sitting by the side of the hedge, weeping over the dead bodies of their parents, who had perished from famine and fever, exposed to the storm of the previous night. The children were conveyed to the workhouse, and from their story, and further inquiries, it was made out that their mother had left a tribe of gipsies to marry a railway navvy, as the children called their father. He was a reckless, drunken profligate; and after losing his arm from an accident which originated in his own carelessness, was dismissed from his employment, and driven to wander a homeless vagrant. The children said they had lived by begging, and had often been nearly starved; but their mother would never let them steal or tell a lie, and she had often cried when their father came to their lodging very drunk, speaking very bad words, and holding out silver money, which their mother would not touch.

But at last he was seized with a bad fever on the road, and, houseless and penniless, they crept under a haystack; from thence the children were sent to the road-side to beg from passengers, or to seek some farmhouse, where charity might bestow on them a little milk or a few crusts of bread; but the poor wife sickened of the same disease which was carrying off her husband, and in their desperation the wretched sufferers dragged themselves to the road which led to the village, in hopes of reaching it, and finding shelter and aid. But it was too late. In the midst of the beating snow, and in the darkness of a winter's night, the man sank down and died. The wretched woman cast herself down beside him, and, overcome by sorrow and long suffering, did not survive to see the morning light.

The sympathy created by this melancholy event procured many warm friends for the orphans. They were fed and clothed, sent to school, and carefully instructed in that pure religion of which they had formerly had but vague notions. Jack, the boy, who was about eleven years of age when they were orphaned, was a thoughtful, industrious lad; for three years he made useful progress at school, and in the last three years, under a good master, he had become a skilful carpenter. Ruth, who was two years younger than her brother, had inferior abilities; she was rough, boisterous, and careless; and was ever the dunce of the school, till at length the schoolmistress begged she might be put to something else, for she declared she made "no hand at learning." She was then placed with an old woman, who daily complained that "the lass was of no use; she was willing enough; but if she was set to wash the cups, she broke them; and she could not even stir the fire but she would poke it out." At fifteen years old, Ruth was a strong, active girl, extremely good-natured, true, and honest, fondly attached to her brother, and devoted to her kind friends at the rectory; yet, certainly, Ruth was no favorite with the wives of the neighboring farmers, who unanimously agreed that she must have "two left hands," she was so awkward in all her undertakings. Under these untoward circumstances, it had been arranged that Ruth should undergo an apprenticeship in the rectory establishment, to fit her for household service. This event was looked forward to by the girl with great delight, and it was with much regret that Margaret set out to announce to her their plan of leaving Wendon, which must necessarily extinguish her hopes of preferment.

There was still another who would deeply feel their loss; and Margaret was accompanied by her brothers, who were anxious to see their untiring assistant, Jack. It was he who gave his useful aid to them in the construction of bows, bats, leaping-bars, and all the wooden appliances of school-boy sports; and above all the people of the village, the boys murmured most that they must part with Jack.

They found the industrious lad busily engaged in making a new crutch for Nanny, the old woman with whom the orphans lived. "You see, Master Hugh," said he, "poor Ruth happened to throw down Nanny's crutch, and then the careless lass fell over it, and snapped it. I reckon it had been a